Heads up or heads down

Hands up if you have ever followed your in-car sat nav down a dead end or followed the recipe to the letter but the dish is under/over cooked? I know I have.

What about your running GPS, heart rate monitor or business KPI dashboard? How do we know if the information they are giving us actually matches what we need and accounts for variability in human performance and other complex interactions?

Sometimes it pays to look through the windshield at the road you are heading down or check the food to see how much more cooking it needs. 

It always pays to listen to your body when deciding how hard to train and often the best performance data a business can get is by listening to employees and customers.

Turning out the lights

There is a notorious traffic black spot in town. Two roundabouts, fed by main roads coming from the west, plus the local business park and residential areas. Ultimately it all funnels through one set of traffic lights outside a supermarket entrance. At peak times it is a gridlocked mess.

Planners have tried every trick, extra lanes, new road layouts, re-phasing the lights and still the place is jammed up.

Then a few weeks ago somebody drove into the traffic lights (by accident I imagine) and put them out of action for a few days.

A funny thing happened. The traffic flowed, even at peak times.

Drivers, cyclists and pedestrians looked out for each other, nobody got hurt, decisions got made in the moment and the traffic flowed. After a few days the lights got fixed and gridlock returned.

It got me thinking, which traffic lights need turning off in my world?

 

 

One step at a time

This weekend tiny Yeovil Town take on the might of Manchester City for the first time in the top flight of English football. Its been a 27 year journey for the team since Yeovil Ladies were founded as Yetminster in 1990. The last 5 years have seen them progress from the 4th tier of English football to champions of the second division last season.

Its all been achieved without a fat chequebook but built on a foundation of a clear purpose, excellent coaching and a lot of hard work by the staff and players. The future looks bright as underpinning the first team are 2 more senior teams, 3 youth teams at different age groups and two development centres for young players.

As someone famous once said 'overnight success is years in the making'.

Rinus Michels

The legendary Dutch football coach Rinus Michels passed away this week aged 77.

While much has been written about his tactical innovations it is perhaps his man management that deserves a fitting last word. Rudi Krol who played for him summed up his genius thus: “Most of all he gave you a freedom. You never went on the pitch weighed down by what you had to do. He recognised your ability and gave you some respect that you would do the right thing.”

A leadership philosophy that we can all aspire to.

Adaptability – when the rain starts to fall

F1 is not a spectacle I pay much attention to – unless it rains. So yesterday I was eagerly anticipating the start of the race in Singapore as light drizzle turned to more persistent rain and the track got properly wet.

The next hour turned into a masterclass on adaptability and who could adapt the most effectively.

This was the first wet race in Singapore so the drivers had never driven the cars with a full fuel load (100kgs) and wet weather tyres. Add in that Singapore is a night race and they have never raced at night in the rain, plus, as the rain falls or stops the track changes with every lap - less grip, more grip. These were situations that they had never been exposed to before. You can see the scale of the challenge. Who was going to adapt the best?

It’s a good metaphor for the modern world. While we can practice and rehearse different situations there are an increasing number of new situations that we are exposed to that we just can't predict or rehearse. What makes the difference between those who can adapt and those who struggle faced with new situations?

A good way of thinking about adaptability is as a combination of your attitude (willingness to adapt) and your capability (having the skills to actually do something different when its required). As an example, put me in the F1 car yesterday and I might have had the willingness to drive differently from my usual experience of lapping in a go kart in the dry with my mates but I definitely don’t have the skill! Equally, you could put some very capable drivers into the car, who have the driving skills but just not the attitude to adapt, preferring to stick with their original plans or just giving up all together in the face of the challenge.

Its probably no co-incidence that Ayrton Senna and Lewis Hamilton, 2 of the most successful drivers of recent times are also the most effective in wet, changeable conditions. Equally Michael Schumacher and Senna have also won races with their cars stuck in a single gear which has required a level of adaptation beyond most racing drivers. Just try driving a few miles around town in one gear!

Its worth keeping in mind that adaptability can be situational for people, in other words I can be good at adapting in some situations but not others. In a future post I will take a look at some ways to develop adaptability in sport and business.In the meantime, notice the situations where you are ablest to adapt and those that you find more challenging. Is it your attitude or skill that is holding you back in those situations?

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Resilient performers

Sally Pearson, Adam Gemili and Dina Asher-Smith are three athletes who came into the recent World Championships off the back of major injury setbacks. All three had different circumstances but picked themselves up off the floor to perform at their absolute best when it mattered. What can we learn from them?

For Sally Pearson, an Olympic Gold in London 2012 must have seemed a lifetime ago. Longstanding wrist and hamstring problems had left her a shadow of her former self in recent seasons and her last major championship was in 2013. But coming into 2017 she managed to stay healthy even though her early season races were short of her best from years previously. What Sally could do tap into was the wealth of experience she had acquired. She and the team around her know how to prepare and be ready when it matters. "I've got the most tight-knit little squad, I call them Team Pearson - my friends and my mum and my husband and my training partners, (although) I've only got two of them," she said. Pearson stayed patient, kept on improving and when pre-race favourite Kendra Harrison made mistakes under pressure Sally was there to take the Gold.

Adam Gemili didn’t scale the same heights in 2012 but as a teenage breakthrough performer he was clearly a future star. His progress has been a stop start of injuries and outstanding performances, including a 4th place in the Rio Olympics last year. Early in the season he broke down and had a lengthy period of rehab. Still short of fitness at the British trials in July he wasn’t selected for the individuals 200m but was included as a relay team member. Frustrated, angry and disappointed, it would have been easy for him to take his foot off the gas and just make up the numbers in the worlds or even write off his season completely. In the event he did the opposite and went full tilt knowing there was nothing to lose. After his trials disappointment he said “I’ve just got to accept I am part of the relay team and focus on that”. Come the World Championship final he ran a stunning back straight relay leg in 9 secs in which he goes past the competition as if they are standing still and sets up the British team for a national record. The outcome, World Championship Gold, when many athletes would have been on the sofa still bitching about their bad luck and the unfairness of the selection process.

Dina Asher-Smith was another young athlete making rapid progress in recent years. For her, this was the first major injury of her career. Arriving in London less than fully fit after fracturing her right foot and having screws inserted, she took the competition one race at a time with a focus on just performing to the best of her fitness. As each round of the 200m progressed Dina got faster and faster, ending up 4th in the final just 7 one-hundredths of a second away from a medal. But that wasn’t the end. With another 2 races in the 4x100m she was able to continue racing herself fit and ended the championships with a Silver medal in the 4x100m final. Reflecting on her performance she said “Arguably, this injury has done more for me in the long term mentally than having an easy season and getting a medal would have,” she adds. “That sounds crazy as a medal would have been fantastic, but when you are young you have to go through trials and tribulations to realise what real problems are. I’d rather get all my learning experiences now – so when I am older I have got that mental prep to do the business when I am physically at my peak.”

With resilience skills like those you wouldn't bet against Pearson winning more medals and Gemili and Asher-Smith being on top of the podium at a major championship in future.

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Day by day

Fitness isn't built with occasional transformational mega sessions. It comes day by day, one training at a time, with the right recovery to allow the body to adapt.

Learning and growth isn't created with the occasional transformational workshop. It comes day by day, one action at a time, with the right recovery to allow the mind to process and integrate what it has experienced.

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Which benchmark to use?

So what should we measure ourselves against to know if we are making progress?

A competitor?

The best in the world?

Perfection?

The flaw in all three is obvious. Your competitor may be getting worse not better (car makers benchmarking themselves against GM in the 1980s). The 'best' may be about to become irrelevant (film makers benchmarking themselves against Kodak in the 1990s). And perfection is unobtainable so we will always fail against that standard.

How about benchmarking against ourselves. Ourselves from a week ago or a month ago or a year ago - choose a timeframe that is appropriate for what is being measured (e.g. fitness is good to measure over months rather than compared to last week).

Are we better than our former self? It is the only comparison that really matters. Best of all, we own the progress completely.

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Use it or lose it

This week I went to Yoga for the first time in a month. Summer holidays, mine and the teacher’s, had meant a break. The class was a horror show for me. My strength had declined, co-ordination was all over the place and as for my balance…

In contrast I also did running drills for the first time in month. They were smooth and with no discernible quality difference from a month ago. So what was going on?

Yoga is a newish skill for me in the last couple of years. I practice once or twice a week with gaps here and there when I’m away on business. The result is that the movement patterns aren’t yet burned into my deep memory. Any let up in practice and I quickly start to go backwards in my skill level.

Running is a different game. I’ve been doing it since I was 18 months old. I’ve practiced specific technical drills countless times. The nerve cells in the relevant pathways are coated deeply in myelin and the complex skills of those drills are now as good as unforgettable.

Sport shines a bright spotlight on this learning regression when we miss practice but what about less visible skills. The kind of stuff we ‘learn’ on training courses at work and then practice only periodically while kidding ourselves and our boss that we really have improved.

Great training may start with an inspiring experience to show us new skills and get us going but it requires sustained, focused practice over an extended period of time to really shift our skill level to the point where it becomes automatic. It is one of the big challenges of the time for businesses - how to create that learning environment for employees (and suppliers, customers and freelancers?). There is much that can be learned from elite performers in sport and the arts when it comes to designing learning programs.

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Who is it for?

Your product, the thing you make or do. Who is it really for?

Watching the World Athletics Championships last week left me feeling that much of the time the product is made for the people who organise the event rather than the people who are paying to watch it or even the athletes who provide the entertainment.

Some examples:

1.     The final night had 5 track races and 2 field events spread over more than 2 hours. Plenty of time for everything to have undivided attention. And yet, the climax of the men’s high jump takes place during the women’s 5000m final. Where do you look as a spectator during the closing laps of the 5000m? What does live TV show? Why not pause the High Jump or jump during the early laps.

2.     Monday night had an utterly compelling women’s triple jump. Ibarguen (photo) and Rojas trading the lead several times and the competition going to the final round. But it was lost amongst all the other events. Why not shine a spotlight on the athletes – literally. Their choice of colour (and music even). Imagine Ibarguen blasting down the runway, hair trailing, in a blaze of bright light which follows her into the sky as she leaps for Gold.

3.     The call room. For non-athletes this is where the competitors assemble before their competition. At Championships this can be up to 40 minutes before the event starts. So it means you have to warm up, report to the call room, then sit around getting cold. Its part of athletics and as a developing athlete you learn to deal with this at English Schools, Regional and the National Championships so by the time you get to World/Olympic competition it is second nature. But it still has a negative impact on athlete performance – witness Bolt in the 4x100m tweaking his hamstring. Why do we do it? In the old days it was to give out numbers and lane assignments and generally to make sure that the athletes were there on time. But this is 2017 with professional athletes and electronic timing. There must be a better way that maximises athlete performance and hence customer enjoyment.

Athletics needs to take a long hard look at its product and ask who is it really made for – spectators, athletes or the organisers?

What about your product?

Call room insight - check out this excellent piece from former World Champion Dai Greene

 

Something small

You know the kind of thing. Its small, we know it will make a difference and yet we keep avoiding it.

When I was an athlete, one of mine was replacing a couple of my four daily cups a coffee with water. Better hydration, better sleep, prizes worth having as an athlete. For years I managed to avoid changing my situation, it was bonkers really. Then one day I just did it. And the next day. And in no time it became permanent.

What is your small thing to change this week in pursuit of better performance?

Re-write the rules

The conventional wisdom says that a guy of 1.96m (6’ 5”) can’t run the 100m well. His limbs are going to be just too long and that means that by the time he has got out of the start position, through the acceleration phase and into his stride then he will be too far behind to catch up. There is a reason that many of the top 100m sprinters are between 1.78m and 1.88m (5’ 10” and 6’2” tall).

But what if you find a way to re-write the rules?

Usain Bolt started life as a 200m runner – he was tall even as a kid, hitting his peak height by the age of 16. But when he turned his mind to the 100m he worked on his start technique to reduce that handicap of being tall. He adjusted his race tactics to get upright in less time than the conventional wisdom says is ideal for the 100m and ultimately that enables him to unleash his top speed sooner and for longer.

The effect of re-writing the rules of 100m sprinting we witnessed for a decade, with his c.41 strides taking him clear of the competition time and time again.

The question is, what conventional wisdom (rules) do we adhere to that could be ripe for re-writing?

When 'No compromise' becomes 'Win at all costs'

For several years now the mantra of UK Sport, the body which largely funds the British Olympic Sports, has been ‘No Comprise’. It is an approach which has brought massive success as measured by medals in the last 3 Summer Olympics.

Similar mantras have been adopted in business in pursuit of outstanding results and there is much business literature which focuses on these success stories. But what happens at the edge, when ‘No compromise’ morphs into ‘Win at all costs’ and what can organisations do to ensure that they stay true to their original intentions?

In recent years we have seen many examples of where ‘No Compromise’ strays into grey areas or even worse. In sport we have the bullying allegations at British Cycling, the McLaren 'spygate', Half Marathon winners cutting the course and the notorious Jiffy bag/shoddy medical record keeping at Team Sky. Businesses have equally been caught short. Tesco was so focused on sales targets that it lost sight of the accounting rules and importance of its relationships with suppliers while Volkswagen simply falsified emissions data because ‘everybody else does it’.

How do professional organisations run by smart people get themselves into these situations?

In pursuit of results ‘No compromise’ can lead people to stray into grey areas, especially when it comes to behaviour. The message is clear, results come first everything else second. What follows is not necessarily illegal but it is often unethical and certainly not what the original ‘No compromise’ approach envisaged. From there it is a very short step to breaking the rules when the pressure is really on to deliver results.

What can leaders do to ensure that their organisation avoid this trap?

When setting difficult targets with potentially big negative consequences there is a huge responsibility to ensure that the targets are realistic and that the resources to achieve them are available. If you are an Olympic sport with a large percentage of your future funding (and no alternative sources) determined by the number of medals that you win then straying into the grey zone becomes an option to preserve your funding. If you are a Retail or Auto Executive with impossible sales targets and your job on the line, then stepping over the line can become tempting – especially if you witness others doing it. If your people don’t believe that they can achieve the goal fairly then you are exposing your organisation to the risk that will achieve it unfairly with all the consequences that entails.

Leaders also need to be absolutely clear about where the boundaries lie. If the line is drawn at illegal/against the rules then you are inviting people to step into the grey areas, especially as every individual will have their own interpretation of what is ethical based on their own values and experiences. Leaders need to set the standard of behaviour expected and role model it visibly, calling out situations where the standard drops. The obvious consequence of this is if that standards come first then sometimes the results will not be achieved.

If you want to avoid the reputational damage that comes with straying into the grey areas of ‘No compromise’ then standards of behaviour have to come before results.

Choose your environment

I recently pulled out a stack of old DVD's and chose to watch the Shawshank Redemption for the first time in years. Its a great film and one of the many lines that jumped out at me comes towards the end when the wrongly convicted Andy is finalising his escape plans and he says to Red "I had to come to prison to become a crook".

The culture in which we live has a huge impact on us. It may be difficult to choose the country that we are born in or the family that we grow up in but we certainly have lots of choice about the  organisation we choose to work in or the sports team we train with.

How good for you are your current environments? Do they serve bring out the best in you or lead you to play below your best?

 

Making it look easy

Watch any master at work and they make it look easy. Lang Lang playing piano, Eliud Kipchoge racing a marathon, Sir Ian McKellen acting in the West End. You know that they have worked for years honing their craft to a level most people can’t even imagine.

Even folks who are just pretty good; like the local road running matador and those guys who make cool youtube videos that you wish you could replicate were once ordinary until they started to learn and improve.

What marks out all these people from the ordinary Joe is that they are prepared to stretch themselves. They seek out new knowledge from teachers, people who inspire them and have been there before. They work on their craft relentlessly, trying out new things, getting feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Over time their reward is increasing mastery.

Not of all of us can become a Lang Lang, Eliud or Sir Ian. But many of us aren’t even pushing to explore the limits of our potential. What could happen if we sought out a teacher and worked on improving our craft?

Ego is the enemy of team

If you want to get better and perform at a higher level the chances are that you will need to work with other people who are just as skilled and high-performing as you, if not more so. 

We need to shift our mindset from comparing ourselves with the others, to embracing what they bring. When we stop needing to be better than potential collaborators then great things can happen.

We all know of teams in work or sport that ended up being less than the sum of their parts because ego got in the way.

Hoping or preparing...

Fingers crossed is a common strategy for race day.

Hoping for a performance that your training indicates is unlikely, that the weather is 'normal', that the energy drinks don't upset your stomach, that your new running shoes give you a couple of seconds a mile rather than blisters...

On the other hand, preparing appropriately is far more likely to be a winning strategy.

Doing the right training at the right time, practicing in different weather conditions (especially extremes), testing out the energy drinks and wearing in your new shoes before the race.

A little preparing beats a lot of hoping.